Doug Ford is angry about Blue Jays tickets too
Welcome to the resale revolt, comrade Ford
In yet another case of being mad at a thing after partially causing that thing, Premier Doug Ford says he’s considering legislation that would put a cap on ticket resale prices after many disappointed Blue Jays fans lost out on World Series tickets this week. As is often the case, tickets sold out quickly, then hit the resale market for thousands of dollars.
“They’re gouging the people,” Ford told reporters yesterday. “When you have one player in the market that controls the tickets, that’s not right for the people,” he added, referring to Ticketmaster. The platform regularly prompts outrage when fans are priced out of tickets to concerts and sporting events.
Related: Ticketmaster is getting sued for out-of-control concert prices
While it would be nice if fans could go to the World Series without draining their bank accounts, we must note that Ford himself contributed to this problem. In 2019, he squashed an anti-scalping law that would have capped resale prices at 50 per cent over face value. At the time, he called it “unenforceable.”
We can’t help but wonder what caused this change of heart. Was Ford with us in the Ticketmaster trenches this week? That’s enough to radicalize anyone.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
